I put in way too much time into Final Fantasy XIV; I'm level 30 in every crafting class now, and am well on my way to level 50 in Weaver, assuming I don't get flustered with how expensive materials I can't just craft will get. Also can get a decent supply of lightning shards, goddamn lightning shards.

Also played a lot of Assassin's Creed, and it's officially perfectly okay! The story is...confusing, scenes kind of dart in and out of focus, and the fact that you are shown this weird image of time-dilated Big Ben during every loading scene is just kinda confounding? But I have convinced myself that the story has always been hot garbage and I can't expect things to start turning around now. I will focus on the female protagonist and the gender-representative cast. There's a transman! There's a really fat lady! A fair number of the bad guys are women! This are good first steps that I will reward. Now if only London wasn't so goddamn white. Like, Henry Green is literally the only brown person in the entire city. I don't know how he's still alive.

There is also a weird thing with the female protagonist. As with all Assassin's Creed games, you can't just wander around unperturbed. There's always some guard or gang member yelling at you for daring to wear your elaborate assassin uniform. (And with good reason; these costumes are extremely elaborate!) But...when the person constantly being yelled at for existing on the street is a woman, it takes on a very different tone. Specifically, it feels pretty much exactly like street harassment. Just a bunch of fucking dudes in bad hats yelling at a woman for daring to walk down the street. Sure, they never say anything sexist (good call, Ubisoft, thanks for remembering Arkham City), but it's still...disturbing. Things are tough when you try to be inclusive.